Tag Archives: Cielo

That would be me, noticeably absent from this blog since August, when Kate started college. Turns out, Kate likes college, and is now a full time student and taking Russian, of all the bizarre things.

But the real question is, where have I been? Well, let’s see. I’ve been to Alecto’s house, with Kate a girlfriend in tow, introducing them to the Big City.

And I’ve been working, part time, for a local dot.com company…..writing blog posts. Aha! THAT’S why I’ve been absent from here. Because, after writing blog posts for someone else every day, I don’t really want to come here and do it for “fun”. Fortunately, my blogging job requires me to use this same blog platform so there was no real learning curve.

But next week that job changes. Less blogging, more marketing and customer service. I guess that’s a good thing. It means I do have something to offer besides my ability to compose blog posts given that the content is supplied by someone else and I just format it, add photos and slam it in. Now I have to start looking at web marketing (Facebook? Twitter? Perish the thought.)

(All indented quotes are from the writings of Mother Teresa.)

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

See that beautiful woman up there? Her name is Mimi, and she has leprosy. I’m the one in the purple t-shirt, and I’ve suffered from my own form of leprosy as well. I’ll explain in a minute.

Leprosy: as defined by the National Institutes of Health, also known as Hansen’s Disease.

Even those who never read the Bible know that it’s full of people with leprosy. The unclean, the untouchable, society’s outcasts, forgotten, ignored, or viciously and deliberately scorned, the “least of these.” There are all sorts of theories about what the word “leprosy” really means, as used in the Bible. Everything from mentally insane, emotionally disturbed, or merely unpopular to people forced to sit at the roadside and scream “Unclean!” to passers-by, people who were considered to be highly contagious, even before we as humankind knew what “contagious” really meant, or how pathogens and bacteria are transported from person to person. People described as being “covered in sores”.

For anyone who isn’t aware of it, leprosy still exists today. Statistics abound as to the number of new cases diagnosed every year. Look them up if you’re interested. Off the top of my head, I know that the number of diagnosed cases is rising in India every year. Ninety-five percent of the world’s population is immune; of the remaining population, those who contract the disease can be treated with antibiotics and are considered to be non-contagious after as little as two weeks of treatment.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a pill that will cure the perception that people with leprosy are “unclean”, and the practice of confining people with leprosy to controlled facilities to “protect the surrounding populations and communities from contagion” still occurs.

I have been blessed to have been allowed to visit a leprosorium on numerous occasions since my first visit to the Dominican Republic in 2000.

Yep, you read that right. BLESSED. Here are a few things I’ve learned from the residents of the Sisters of Mercy (Mother Teresa’s organization) leprosorium:

You’re never too old for a teddy bear. (Notice the beautiful hands holding the teddy bear.) Same is true about candy; go have that Snickers bar, or a Jolly Rancher.

Blindness doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t see, nor does deafness prohibit you from hearing.

If you can’t sing well, you can still sing loud.

If you can’t dance, it doesn’t matter. Dance anyway.

When someone loves you enough to throw a party in your honor, make every effort to attend. But if you can’t make it, and they really love you, they will bring the party to you.

There are people who still keep their word, no matter what. A Wake Forest student visited the leprosorium during spring break a few years back, and she made friends with one of the gentlemen residents. Although he was blind, he insisted on having a polaroid picture taken of himself, with his new friend. The picture was taken and placed in his hands. He then asked the student to place his fingers over her face, so he would know exactly where her face was in the picture, and he told her, “I will pray for you.” The following spring the student returned, and when he heard her voice he called out to her, saying “I prayed for you!” and showed her the picture. Her face was no longer visible, having been worn away by his touch as he held the photo as he prayed.

The beauty of a home is as much or more about the people who live there as it is about the materials by which it was constructed, or by the luxury of the furnishings within. Stuff is…..just stuff.

This is the doctor who takes care of the patients at the leprosorium. He’s worked there for 35 years, give or take. He knows a great deal about the symptoms, treatment, and care of patients with Hansen’s disease. The thing about leprosy is that it damages peripheral nerves, effectively removing the patient’s ability to feel pain. A person with leprosy can get a speck of dust in his eye, and because he feels no pain, he does nothing to remove the irritation, thus damaging the cornea and potentially causing blindness. A person with leprosy can get a burn or a scrape on a hand or foot, and because she feels no pain, the smallest of injuries can become so infected and inflamed that permanent damage occurs. Sometimes the patient loses fingers or toes, or hands or feet…all because there is no pain to warn him of a problem. In other words, pain can be a blessing, an indication of something that needs attention, NOW!

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

The doctor also knows about that ‘other’ form of leprosy. He calls it ‘leprosy of the heart’. When we lose our ability to feel empathy for others, to be willing to walk in their shoes, to seek first to understand rather than to be understood, we become hardened; we don’t see the needs of those who surround us every day. I confess to struggling with this form of the disease.

The first time I visited the leprosorium, one of the first residents I met was Enrique. He LOVES Senor Jack, the American director of Mission Emanuel. He always had a smile for everyone he met. His ‘uniform’ always included a hat, most recently a Panama hat, and sunglasses.

Enrique died this week. I will miss him terribly.

But, borrowing from that other great bastion of wisdom, the script of “Men in Black”…he isn’t dead, he just went home.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. -Mother Teresa

I was supposed to leave for Cielo last Saturday. Last Thursday I decided, with encouragement from family and medical peeps, that it would be in my best interest to stay home. Hard, hard decision to make, what with the situation in Haiti and any potential impact it could have on the Dominican Republic, and the situation with my silly back and sciatica stuff. I made the right decision for me and my family.

But I still miss Cielo. Yesterday the group went to the Haitian church in Cielo. I’ve never been to the Haitian church, but I hear it’s amazing. Mission Emanuel is bucking the trend in the DR that tends to treat Haitians as a little less than human. The mission ministers to Haitians through church, school, medical care and employment. Typically Haitians living in the DR are treated very badly. If you search the news, you’ll find the story of the history between the two countries. It’s ugly.

It’s hard for any of us to imagine the devastation, and desperation, in Haiti right now. I went to Slidell, Louisiana, about six weeks after Katrina. I thought I new what I was getting myself into. I didn’t. Unless you’ve seen, touched, tasted, smelled the results of epic disaster, up close and personal, you really can’t wrap your mind around it. It’s hard to understand it when you DO see it for yourself.

I’ve seen the construction “techniques” used in the Dominican Republic by the poor. They are horrendous. And the Haitians are poorer by leaps and bounds. Yes, Haiti has been through a lot of unnecessary tragedy–think deforestation and the resulting flooding. Forget the reasons. Forget the railings of senile “men of God” here in the states. Forget the absolute corruption of the Haitian government that also holds much of the responsibility for the abject poverty of its citizens.

The Haitian people need help, quickly. The shock is wearing off, and the desperation is setting in. And with desperation comes violence. The island of Hispaniola is a ticking time bomb right now.

I still miss Cielo. I miss Rosa. One of the other women who went down Saturday took a prayer shawl I knit for Rosa. I hope she likes it. I hope she gets the chance to enjoy it.

So, I’m sitting here looking out the window at another cloudy Friday with rain forecast for Saturday. The breeze picks up and another shower of leaves falls. The poplar tree in my neighbor’s back yard is a little more golden today than it was yesterday.

Another October.

And when October goes
The snow begins to fly
Above the smokey roofs
I watch the planes go by

The children running home
Beneath a twilight sky
Oh, for the fun of them
When I was one of them

And when October goes
The same old dream appears
And you are in my arms
To share the happy years

I turn my head away
To hide the helpless tears
Oh how I hate to see October go

I should be over it now I know
It doesn’t matter much
How old I grow
I hate to see October go

For the unenlightened, that’s a Barry Manilow song. Barry’s corny, true, but that song…not so much. I rediscovered it after Daddy died. November, 2004.

The past three weeks have been a reminder of just how fragile life is. I finally got around to watching Defiance. What a great movie. After watching it I did a little research into Jewish tradition, which I really should know more about. I was interested in the blessings: “Blessed art Thou oh God, King of the Universe, who…” When we were watching the movie, hubby asked me why they break the wine glass at the end of the wedding ceremony, and I didn’t know. So when I was reading about the blessings, there was the answer.

To remind the couple that life is fragile.

Two weeks ago there was a shooting just down the road from our house. Two police officers were shot as they tried to apprehend a suspect who was threatening to kill his estranged wife, who was at work at the time. She was the manager of a local fast food restaurant. The suspect was killed. One of the officers also died a week later from his injuries. The community was devastated by the incident.

Life is fragile.

Last week we learned of the sudden death of a friend back home in Virginia. We’d known him for thirty years. He died of a massive heart attack. He was 58 years old.

Life is fragile.

Next week it will be November. It will have been five years since my dad died. Five years since my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, and my father all died, one right after another.

Life is fragile.

In Cielo, little Brenda had heart surgery last week. She is doing well. I don’t know how things are with Rosa, but hope to hear soon. I’m not going to be able to see her in January. I don’t like it, but it’s how things are.

Over on the Cielo page, at the bottom, there’s a picture over several women sitting together under a huge stand of bamboo. Rosa is one of the women in that picture, and I referred to her as a sister.

Yesterday I received the latest newsletter from the director of Mission Emanuel. Included was a story about Rosa:

I knew that Rosa had breast cancer. I did not know the extent until yesterday.

Wubby and I helped build that house in the picture. When I saw Rosa in June, she asked if I was coming back next January. I told her that I didn’t know, but I hoped so. I also told her that, whenever I came back, I’d be able to speak GOOD Spanish. She laughed, as if to say “Yeah. Right.”

There’s a group headed to Cielo in mid-October and I wish I was going with them. I feel helpless. I’d like to make something to send to her, but I don’t know what. Prayer shawls in the Caribbean? It’s too hot in October. January, when it’s beautiful, temps in the lower 80’s, the Dominicans wear sweaters and the Americanos don’t sweat. Much. So maybe a prayer shawl would be ok. I don’t know.

There was another story about another family. The youngest child, Brenda, is eight. She is sponsored by a friend of mine. Last January I got to spend time with my friend at Brenda’s house. She is adorable, spunky…and faces heart surgery.

This post is not about the condition of health care in the Dominican Republic, or in the US for that matter.

It’s about what one person can do to help another person, what one family can do to help another family.

The mission has established a fund to help defray the cost of major medical care for families in Cielo: Sanidad Del Cielo.

Healing from Heaven.

The first time I went to Cielo we dedicated a very small children’s medical clinic, in two rooms on the second (then, the top) floor of a small building that served as pre-school and church. Next month there will be another dedication for a children’s medical clinic. Ten-thousand square feet, located just beyond the bamboo stand, state of the art physical therapy, vaccinations, dental care.

I don’t have much of a voice with this blog, but with what little voice I do have I am asking. One person donating twenty bucks can’t make much of a difference. But a few hundred people, donating about twenty bucks a month over the last 15 years, have made a huge difference in the quality of life for families in Cielo.

Right now the distance between Rosa and me feels like so much more than the 1500 miles between North Carlina and Santo Domingo. And the distance between me and God feels insurmountable.

I’ve seen You calm the waters raging
in the rivers of my mind
Your spirit blows a breeze into my soul
And I’ve felt the fire that warms the heart
Knowing that it comes from You
Then I’ve let it turn as cold as a stone
Sometimes I feel like I’m as close as your shadow and
Sometimes I feel like I’m looking up
at You from the bottom of the

Grand Canyon, so small and so far
From the Grand Canyon, with a hole in my heart
And I’m a long way from where I know I need to be
When there’s a Grand Canyon between You and me

I’ve had the faith that gave me strength
for moving any mountainside
I’ve felt the solid ground beneath my feet
But I’ve had the bread of idleness while
drinking from a well of doubt
And it shakes the core of all I believe
Sometimes I feel like I’m as close as your shadow and
Sometimes I feel like I’m looking up
at you from the bottom of the

When there’s a Grand Canyon between You and me

Sometimes I feel like I’m as close as your shadow and
Sometimes I feel like I’m looking up
at you from the bottom of the

When there’s a Grand, Grand Canyon between You and me

Hopefully I can send something to Rosa next month that will help close the gap until January.

So, last week I was in Cielo, Bayona, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A lot of words to define a very small place. Since 2004 a group of women from the Winston-Salem area have traveled to Cielo every January to minister to Dominican women in this impoverished community. As part of this year’s weekly devotions for us Americans, I volunteered to speak to our women on El Roi, “The God who Sees”.

So I started thinking about how the women’s ministry of Mission Emanuel got started, about how the women were overlooked in all of the ongoing ministries up to that time. Then I started thinking about women in our own country who are overlooked, misunderstood, ignored. And, as it usually happens, I started writing.

This is what hit the paper.

She is an invisible woman.

She’s the waitress at the coffee shop where I have breakfast with my daughter on Saturday morning.

She’s the housekeeper who cleans my house while I’m at the club, or brings me clean towels and makes my bed when I travel.

She’s the business woman I see every weekday morning, juggling her cell phone and mascara, waiting for a green light.

She’s the homeless woman who sleeps under the bridge near my house.

She’s the woman I see in church every Sunday. She knows my name, and I know hers. We exchange pleasantries.

“How are you this morning?”

“How was your week?”

“I can’t believe how your kids have grown!”

She’s the woman I never invite to lunch, or to my house for dinner, or to “girl’s night out”.

She’s never a part of the gab sessions in the break room.

I assume she wants to be left alone.

She may even be one of my teammates on a mission trip.

I don’t see her. Do you see her?

El Roi sees her.

El Roi sees the waitress, working three jobs to earn enough money to keep a one bedroom apartment for her daughter and herself. You see, her husband left her for his personal assistant. If she doesn’t keep my coffee cup full and steaming, I complain to her manager, and I don’t leave her a tip.

El Roi sees the housekeeper, the woman who moved to America to escape an oppressive regime. You see, they murdered her husband. They won’t allow her to be seen in public without a burqua and a male relative to escort her. They ban her from attending school. I take her service for granted. No one has ever made her bed for her, or given her a towel.

El Roi sees the business woman, the pain behind her smile that she shares with no one, except her husband. You see, they can’t have children. They’ve tried everything. El Roi sees her as she watches me play with my daughter. I think her lifestyle is privileged and powerful, not seeing that she would trade it all for what I have, a child.

El Roi sees the homeless woman sleeping under the bridge. You see, she used to have a family like mine. El Roi knows she lost it all, chasing the high that only comes from crystal meth. When I see her on the sidewalk, I don’t make eye contact. Sometimes I cross to the other side of the street.

El Roi sees my sister in Christ. You see, she’s taking care of her parents, her husband, and her children, pushing herself to the breaking point. He knows that she’s afraid to ask me for help because she doesn’t want to appear weak in her faith. And I am afraid she’ll find out how weak my own faith really is.

El Roi sees the lonely woman, the excluded woman, the abandoned woman. You see, her smile hides her pain. El Roi sees a lifetime, her lifetime, of loneliness, of not being on the “A-list”, not being “one of the girls.”

Am I willing to look at her the way El Roi looks at her? Because when He looks at her, He sees. He knows. He understands. He loves. You see, she’s not invisible in His eyes.

Neither am I.

Neither are you.

Open your eyes and see.

Sometimes I am amazed at how words come to me. Other times I am frustrated by their absence.

These words came easily, perhaps because I’ve known, or been, most of those women at one time or another in my life. What surprised me was when one of the women in our group, a woman who has lived in the DR for many years, who speaks the language and has a powerful witness, asked if she could translate my words and share them with the women in Cielo. Sure, I said, wondering if these words would ring true for the Dominicans the way the did with Americans.

So she translated and shared.

And the Dominicans related just fine.

You see, rich or poor or somewhere in between, American or Dominican, young or not-so-young, each of us shares the same dreams, hopes, fears. I’ve walked in Dominican shoes, and some of the Dominicans have walked in American shoes, and they all fit.

We’ve all been invisible at one time or another, and we come into the light, shielding our eyes until we can adjust to each other’s brightness.

It’s then that we realize that God sees us, we see each other, and we’re all beautiful in the light of day.

A month or so ago I was really torn about writing anything political. I didn’t want to blog politics. But, the more I heard, the lies, distortions, denials…..as I watched the economic crisis unfold, and I watched President Bush push congress into spending 700+ billion dollars of taxpayer money to prop up an economy that had been destabilized by bad banking practices, encouraged by congressional entities and congress-critters, more Democrats that Republicans….watched the fight over a bad bail-out bill that gives the very critters who created this mess full access to MORE money to “fix” it…..argue if you want about whose fault this is. I think it’s a fair bet to say that if the chairman of the House Banking Committee was a Republican, he or she would have been speared, roasted over an open fire, and the bones of the carcass picked clean by Democrats eager to say it wasn’t their fault. Can you say “Enron to the nth degree????”

Didn’t think so.

Now that I have that off my chest…..

I just pulled out my pink sweater. I’m recalculating it using a great website, Knitting Fool and starting over. My first attempt was going to be too large, and I wanted to adjust the lace pattern a little. If you’re really into knitting, Knitting Fool has hundreds of stitch patterns, a sweater wheel (calculator for creating basic sweater patterns) and I’ve found it to be worth paying the extra $10/year to get more than the freebies.

And I’m sending my brain to Cielo. We’re meeting next week to discuss the January Women’s ministry trip, so I’m officially giving myself permission to get energized.

In light of all that, I’ve added a page to my blog called “Cielo” (DUH!) that explains the ministry.

Forgive me for being a bitter person clinging to my (water)guns and my religion faith and check it out.